WEBSITES
$695
CUSTOM DESIGNS · USA COMPANY
HUNDREDS OF SATISFIED CLIENTS
GREAT FOR CORPORATE, PROFESSIONALS, RETAI
COPYRIGHT: YOU OWN EVERYTHING
FAST TURNAROUND
AS SEEN IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL,
NEW YORK TIMES. FORTUNE MAGAZINE. BEST BETS
866.222.0048
I
u
IU
r
JOHN
CHRISTIAN
\
X DESIGNERS 8: CRAFTSMEN
ANNIVERSARY DATE
IN ROMAN NUMERALS!
'December 11} 1998
XII XI MCMXCVIII
$650
'(,i"
\
\."
.' S>-
3-DAY RUSH AVAI LABLE!
MONEY BACK GUARANTEE AND FREE RESIZE
RINGBOX.COM 1.888.646.6466
The Center for Eating Disorders
AT SHEPPARD PRATT
Addressing the medical and psychiatric
needs of patients with eating disorders
our roots are in healing
Baltimore, MD . 410-938-5252 . www.eatingdisorder.org
Margaret
Wong Immigration Center
WWW.lmwong.com
1-866- 254-0687
Preeminent Immigration Lawyers
Green Cards, H-IB, Deportation, Motions,
Criminal Aliens, Work Permits, US Citizen
Listen to Margaret Wong Thursdays 9pm at http://chataboutit.com
The
Perfect
Gift...
X, ORIGINAL BJ?
$
!J; w
The Essential Fireplace Tool
Handcrafted in
New England
since 1941
1-800-601-6642
www.blopoke.com
Teen Ink
"
,\. - ,"
"The New Yorker for teens" - VOYA
A literary magazine written by teens
fictio[1 · nonfiçti9n · poetry
reviews · opinions · art
i ' , '
Subscribe at Teenlnk.com · 800-363-1986
CELEB
ATION BOWL
Personalized Crystal Bowls
for Special Occasions
Weddings - Anniversaries
Recognition - Retirement
Custom Inscriptions? Yes.
Rush Delivery Available.
8.5" - $149 12" - $249
831-427-3512
www.celebrationbowl.com
'UST
510'10"
DHN & PEGGY
I Alan Paine Sweaters
... .........\ --
:- -;- Crewneck, Sleeveless and Cardigan
""'" .ß. ...=
os _ % -.; -=
: Lambswool $125 Cashmere $325
'"--
- -=:;.
- ..,
:
I
. =f;<:'
:.%-
_8 Hunter and Coggins
,
..-- Asheville, NC
f!U ,un I
1-800-343-9396 hunterandcoggins.com
86 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 26, 2009
not that he necessarily belongs there.
Other rappers will likely ride this new
wave of club beats better than J ay- Z, but
they have yet to emerge. It won't be Kid
Cudi, whose singsongy mumble does
nothing to save "Already Home," a slug-
gish number on "The Blueprint 3," and
whose début album, "Man on the Moon;
The End of the Day," manages to be
both distracted and ill-tempered.
A s the marquee names nudge rap into
its transitional, synthetic phase, a
host of traditionalists are doing strong
work in well-known older styles. This
movement reminds me of metal and jazz,
areas where artists work in a larger number
of established subgenres that do small but
consistent business with loyal audiences.
The claim to shock is traded in favor of a
reliable form and a reliable following.
Raekwon, one of the Wu- T ang Clan's
core members, just released "Only Built 4
Cuban Linx . . . Pt. II," the follow-up to
his 1995 début, "Only Built 4 Cuban
Linx . . . " It's a sequel few thought would
come and fewer thought would be any
good. (Imagine if "Chinese Democracy'
had been as good as "Appetite for De-
struction.") Raekwon has drifted between
uninspired beats and retreads since the
nineties. He seems to have found his voice
by simply returning to where he started.
"Cuban Linx II" sounds like an old Wu-
Tang record: scraggly samples from soul
records and rapid, gnomic bundles of
rhymes about drug-selling and agitated
encounters. Almost every skit involving
Raekwon or his partner, Ghostface Kil-
lah, involves somebody yelling at some-
body else. This is the Wu- T ang vision of
living in the projects, "The Wire" before
there was "The Wire." Whether or not it
really represents life as Raekwon and his
bandmates know it isn't relevant; this is
the life that they know how to describe,
and there's an urgency here that's entirely
missing from the recent work of artists
like J ay- Z and Kid Cudi.
F reddie Gibbs is the one rapper I
would put money on right now. And,
though it may be irrelevant to his gift, the
criminal life that Raekwon raps about on
"Cuban Linx II" is still very familiar to
Gibbs. When I spoke to Gibbs on the
phone, he told an unadorned story about
growing up in Gary, Indiana. 'We don't
even have a movie theatre," he said. 'We
don't even have a mall. I can't ride around
Gary and get inspired-we don't have
anything." Several years ago, Gibbs was
selling drugs out of a friend's recording
studio. He eventually decided he could
rap better than the people coming in to
record. His efforts found their way across
the Web to Interscope Records, and
Gibbs was signed. He moved to Los An-
geles in 2005, and began to work at a re-
lentless pace. "I was two hundred per cent
into this rap thing," Gibbs said. "Four P.M.
to 1 P.M. the next afternoon in the studio."
When Joe Weinberger, the man who
signed him, left Interscope, Gibbs was
dropped.
Gibbs returned to Gary briefly, falling
back into crime. Some friends encouraged
him to return to California, and he did.
He has now released five mixtapes onto
the Internet, some using the material
originally intended for Interscope. These
are not quite like other hip-hop mixtapes
circulating, where the standard practice is
to record new material over other artists'
well- known beats. They are closer to fully
formed albums, especially the newest one,
"M id we s tga n gs tab oxframe cadillac-
muzik" The beats are almost all original
and there is a minimum of filler. (Gibbs's
take on this approach is also a short sum-
mation of the music industry's woes:
"These rap motherfuckers giving you
twenty-five songs with only five good
ones-who is going spend their hard-
earned money on that?") Gibbs rhymes
the way he talks, quickly and cleanly, with
little sentimentality or exaggeration. After
years of bloated expansion and leveraging
of fantasies, "gangsta rap" has largely be-
come a meaningless term. Unvarnished
reporting delivered with a panache that
balanced the pain-this was gangsta rap's
first achievement, not unlike the cry of
mid-seventies reggae artists like Culture
and Bob Marley. Somewhere along the
way, the struggle to escape became a love
of accumulation, and underdogs ended up
sounding as smug as the authorities they
once battled.
"I think rap is about to go back to the
early nineties," Gibbs told me. "You could
do whatever you wanted, and radio had to
play it." Gibbs does not currently have a
record deal, and he isn't looking for one. .
NEWYORKER.COM/VIDEO
Freddie Gibbs raps and talks about his music.